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longer, then sat back and reached for a strand of hair to pull at.

    ‘It’s a waste of time,’ Thorne said. ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve got more important things to worry about. Actually, I can’t think of anything that
isn’t
more important than this.’ He pushed back his chair and, after a moment or two, Anna got the message and did the same.

    ‘I’ll get out of your way, then,’ she said.

    She took a step towards the door.

    Thorne thought she looked about fourteen. ‘Look . . . I’ll run it past my boss, all right?’ He saw her expression change and raised a hand. ‘He’ll only say the same as me, though, so don’t hold your breath.’ He picked up the photograph again, nodded down at it. ‘Could do with a bit of that myself,’ he said. ‘Sun and sand.’

    ‘Tom?’

    Thorne looked up to see DI Yvonne Kitson standing in the doorway. They shared the office and most of the time Thorne was happy enough with the arrangement. He certainly liked her a lot more than he had back when she was a high-flier, and suspected that she felt the same way about herself. Like Thorne, she could still put noses out of joint without much effort, but it was hard not to admire the way she had rebuilt a career that had plunged so calamitously off the tracks after an extra-marital affair with a senior officer.

    ‘Like a self-assembly wardrobe,’ she had once said to Thorne. ‘One loose screw and the whole thing fell to pieces.’

    Now, she had one eye on Thorne’s visitor. He gestured towards Anna, the photograph flapping between his fingers, and introduced her.

    Kitson nodded a cursory greeting and turned back to Thorne. ‘I just thought you’d like to know that the jury’s gone out.’

    ‘Right.’ Thorne stood and moved around the desk.

    Anna was doing up the buttons on her jacket. ‘The case you were in court for?’

    Thorne nodded, thinking about the wink he’d given Adam Chambers. ‘One that isn’t quite so . . . piss-easy,’ he said.

    DCI Russell Brigstocke’s office was twenty feet along the corridor from the one Thorne shared with Yvonne Kitson. When Thorne walked in, Brigstocke was on the phone, so Thorne dropped into a chair and waited. He thought about an eighteen-year-old girl whose bones still lay waiting for an inquisitive dog and about a man who had died screaming, handcuffed to the wheel of a car in the middle of nowhere.

    He tried to separate the two murders, committed so many years apart. To tease out the tangle of pictures, real and imagined.

    He wanted to worry about the right thing . . .

    Brigstocke put the phone down and reached for a mug of coffee. He took a sip, grimaced.

    ‘You know the jury’s out?’ Thorne asked.

    Brigstocke nodded. ‘No point thinking about it, mate,’ he said. ‘I heard it went really well this morning.’

    ‘Sam tell you it was in the bag, did he?’

    ‘I’m just saying we’ve done everything we could.’

    ‘Everything except find her,’ Thorne said.

    He felt chilly suddenly, aware of how thin and flimsy his suit was, missing the heavy familiarity of his leather jacket. As it went, most coppers dressed the way he was at that moment. It was as if each one graduated to a plain-clothes unit and instantly acquired the fashion sense of a low-end estate agent, but Thorne had always resisted the pull of the off-the-peg M&S two-piece, the easy-iron shirt and shiny tie.

    ‘It’s bloody cold in here,’ he said.

    Brigstocke nodded. ‘There’s air in the radiator and nobody’s got a key.’

    Thorne got up and walked across to the radiator, bent and put his hand to the metal, which was no better than lukewarm. He stood up, pressed his calves against it. Hearing a sound he had come to recognise and dread, he looked round and saw Brigstocke shuffling a pack of cards.

    ‘I’ve got a new one for you.’

    ‘Do you have to?’ Thorne asked.

    For reasons nobody could quite fathom, Brigstocke had developed a keen interest in magic over the